A consensual hallucination of our distracted age
2018
Written for my project, Hypervision, as part of Bachelor of Design (Hons) with a major in photography at Massey University, Weliington.
Since its discovery, photography has functioned as a tool for communication and expression, based on an agreement between the viewer and the image that what it shows is based in reality (Rexer, 15, Mitchell, 225). However, the emergence of digital technologies and the nature of the digital image; automated, synthetic and immaterial, has shifted perceptions of the medium, fostering uncertainty and distrust (Lister, 16, Rubinstein & Sluis, 28).
Contemporary image culture is ever-changing and ubiquitous. Martin Lister (5) wrote that 'photography appears to be everywhere and nowhere simultaneously;’ images have become omnipresent but physically transient. Advertising images shout at us from billboards and posters and screens, while their cousin, the ‘stock’ image, present an uncanny vision of reality, made deliberately bland; the visual equivalent of white noise (Lister, 2). These generic, commercial, standardised images proliferate the digital landscape, used to fill blank spaces but devoid of any meaning, becoming visual stereotypes (Lister, 2, Frosh, 8).
Mediated through devices and screens, virtual environments have fostered a climate of distraction, fleeting glance and ephemerality (Respini, 15). The frame of the screen can be perceived as either a window into the fantastical land of virtuality or a mirror which presents a hyper-saturated, distorted reflection of our physical reality (Friedberg, 15). Encouraging a multiplicity of vision; a screen can present many windows and visions to the viewer simultaneously; breaking the confining boundaries of the physical plane (Friedberg, 1). With the fast paced nature of virtual environments, our focus is split between so many potential views that it becomes overwhelming (Respini, 21, Steyerl, 41).
Digital photographic technologies, and particularly the camera phone, embody this new rapid and abundant way of seeing. Designed to enable our desire to record and remember, the mobility of the camera phone has exploded the reach of vernacular photography (Berry & Schleser, 23). These devices travel with us, available at any moment to capture and mediate memories as they are made (Bate, 156, Wells, 193). The internet has become a place to archive our lived experiences, and express ourselves, through this accumulation of photos (Respini, 30). Socially, we live a hybrid existence, grounded to our physical reality but also in constant connection with the ubiquitous network; these physical and virtual planes exist as dual facets of our perceived reality (Ritchin, 19). Photographs also play in the realm between the imaginary and the real, taking elements of the two to create a uniquely photographic point of view (Ritchin, 21).
The digital image mimics its analogue forebear, simulating the mechanical processes (Manovich, 57, Lister, 6, 2013). This adherence to previous photographic convention is almost completely arbitrary; a way to ease the social acceptance of digital technologies by making them appear familiar (Rubinstein, 128). The data which a digital camera captures could be outputted in a number of modes but is programmed to present itself in a form that we can recognise (Rubinstein, 128). Digital images are formed like a mosaic, from a regimented grid of pixels, each square assigned a value which defines what it will present, translating the raw data collected by the camera’s light sensor into an image (Mitchell, 5). A digital camera does not take a picture, it constructs it, making the image hyper-real and synthetic (Rubinstein & Sluis, 29). The processes of image creation have become automated and therefore made unknowable to the human user (Palmer, 150).
The digital is intrinsically fluid and malleable (Moschovi, McKay & Plouviez, 15, Rubinstein & Sluis, 29). The images we encounter are never complete, instead they exist with the constant potential for reimagination and manipulation (Rubinstein, 129, Lister, 16). Stranded in latency, these images become an unstable cloud of data, repeatedly formed and deformed as they are drawn through the network, vulnerable to endless re-invention (Rubinstein, 134). Martin Lister (15) wrote, ‘we are drowning in images,’ with millions being made and shared each day, the contemporary image landscape has quickly become overwhelming (Respini, 21). Dislocated from all context or meaning, images become caricatures of the real (Steyerl, 32).
Photography, as a medium, has always been intrinsically linked to technological change and development, therefore placing it at the heart of our experiences in digital and virtual spaces (Lister, 11). Images are inescapable in these environments, becoming an alternative form of communication, creating a common language of visual cues (Lister, 7, Respini, 18). In a virtual space, no photo is experienced in isolation, always in the context of the surrounding images, graphics and text (Dewdney, 101). With digital spaces populated by huge, sprawling photo montages, we see images in fleeting glances, quickly moving onto the next; pictures merge together and blur into a fantastical fractured mirror of our lived reality (Bate, 29, Steyerl, 22). The structure of the online network, driven by automated, associative connections, draws the viewer into the endless pool of virtuality, absorbing them into the hyper-reality of the network (Bate, 160, Lister, 8).
Reference List
Bate, David. Photography: The Key Concepts. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2009. Print.
Berry, Marsha & Max Schleser. Mobile Media Making in an Age of Smartphones. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Print.
Dewdney, Andrew. ‘Curating the Photographic Image in Networked Culture.’ The Photographic Image in Digital Culture. Ed. Martin Lister. New York: Routledge, 2013. 95-112. Print.
Friedberg, Anne. ‘Introduction.’ The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. 1-22. Print.
Frosh, Paul. The Image Factory: Consumer Culture, Photography and the Visual Content Industry. Oxford: Berg, 2003. Print.
Lister, Martin. ‘Introduction.’ The Photographic Image in Digital Culture. Ed. Martin Lister. New York: Routledge, 2013. 1-21. Print.
Lister, Martin. ‘Overlooking, Rarely Looking and Not Looking.’ Digital Snaps: The New Face of Photography. Ed. Jonas Larsen and Mette Sandbye. New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2014. 1-24. Print.
Manovich, Lev. ‘The Paradoxes of Digital Photography.’ Photography After Photography: Memory and Representation in the Digital Age. Eds. Hubertus v. Amelunxen, Stefan Iglhaut & Florian Rotzer. OPA, 1996. 57-65. Print.
Mitchell, William J. The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-photographic Era. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992.
Moschovi, Alexandra, Carol McKay & Arabella Plouviez. ‘Introduction.’ The Versatile Image: Photography, Digital Technologies and the Internet. Eds. Alexandra Moschovi, Carol McKay & Arabella Plouviez. Leuven University Press, 2013. 11-32. Print.
Palmer, Daniel. ‘The Rhetoric of the JPEG.’ The Photographic Image in Digital Culture. Ed. Martin Lister. New York: Routledge, 2013.
149-164. Print.
Respini, Eva. ‘No Ghost Just A Shell.’ Art in the Age of the Internet - 1989 to today. Ed. Eva Respini. Yale University Press, 2018. Print.
Rexer, Lyle. ‘Introduction: Undisclosed Images.’ The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography. Ed. Lyle Rexer. New York: Aperture Foundation, 2009. 9-21. Print.
Ritchin, Fred. After Photography. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009. Print.
Rubinstein, Daniel & Katrina Sluis. ‘The Digital Image in Photographic Culture.’ The Photographic Image in Digital Culture. Ed. Martin Lister. New York: Routledge, 2013. 22-40. Print.
Rubinstein, Daniel. ‘Value of Nothing.’ Journal of Visual Art Practice. 15:2-3, 2016. 127-137. Print.
Steyerl, Hito. ‘In Defense of the Poor Image.’ Hito Steyerl: The Wretched of the Screen. Eds. Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood & Anton Vidockle. E-flux journal, Sternberg Press, 2012. 31-45. Web.
Wells, Liz. ‘Technological Bodies: The camera as mechanical eye.’ Photography: A Critical Introduction. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. 192-195. Print.